A drawing in ink of the carved capital of a pillar in a south chapel of the Abbey Church of St Mary the Virgin in Sherborne, Dorset. The long line of Bishops in Sherborne began in AD705 when the great Diocese of Winchester was divided in two, and St Aldhelm was appointed as the first Bishop of the West Saxons. When the bishop's seat was moved to Old Sarum in 1075, the church was taken over by a Benedictine monastery, who built a new abbey on the same site in the 15th century. Henry VIII dissolved all monastic houses in 1539 and sold the abbey and most of its lands to Sir John Horsey, who in turn sold it to the parishioners for £300.